What a difference a year makes

In true independent comics fashion, my original plans/schedules and such have largely fallen by the wayside.

That being said, the project is still very much alive and well, one year later. After the fantastic road trip last spring (2010) I had to take a little time away from ole John P. This was not for any BAD reason, I just needed to get a little distance from a subject I was so focussed on so that I could gain some clarity.

And clarity I have gained!

I essentially held off on any serious work on the movie until Jan 1, 2011. Since then I've finished transferring the 70 odd hours of film I already have, and am moving into the shockingly exciting NEXT phase.

And with that in mind, I thought, hey good time to revise the blog. I'd like to throw down some general thoughts first, then lay out some plans.

1. I'm not writing this blog for you, or for John P. In truth, when I began shooting, my thought was 'shoot a bunch of shit, and then string it together'. Since I didn't really know what I was doing, I felt having some kind of log would be helpful so that I could at some point review what the heck I was actually doing. I thought, 'if it's online, I'll always have it somewhere, and some people may actually be interested in the thing'.

Turns out, I'm not particularly interested in whether people want to read about this or not, and in fact, knowing that people are reading it is a wee bit distracting. Taking a year off from it SURELY helped as most folks have likely drifted away, but if you are still around, I hope you enjoy it.

At the same time, and please don't take this the wrong way, I'm not super interested in your ideas about how I should do this project. I say this because it's taken a year to get to the point where I have a vision of what this thing is/could/should be, and it will likely differ from yours. Thankfully, there are many cameras out there, and I encourage you to pick one up, and tell the story your way, if you like. Ok, that was snarky, but heartfelt.

2. I'll be throwing working clips up here, along with general thoughts on the timeline, plan, scope of the project. Again, this is partially to document what I'm doing in a easy way/place, and to help me get my thoughts out on 'paper' so that I can have them mildly organized.

3. I have an outline, and most of the shooting is done. I'm off to Chicago again from 3/7-11 to hang with John and dig into his psyche. I'm also working to figure out interviewing his second wife, Misun when I get back from that trip.

4. Basic plan is to have 95% of the filming finished, and all the film logged/separated into chapters before I leave on my honeymoon. Yah, got married. Woot. Going to Viet Nam for most of May. When I return will spend June/July doing more specific editing of video and sound, and have a good working rough cut by end of August. Hell, that's six months from now. I gotta get to work, and quit screwing around on blog spot.

5. Not sure if this will work -- I remember having trouble with it last year, but here's a nice little clip I put together today. It's about a minute long and has footage from a reading in Norman OK at Atomik Pop, in addition to general footage from an awesome state park in Elgin (I believe), and driving through western Louisiana towards Houston. The music is from Zak Sally's 'Fear of Song', and is used because we're friendly with each other, not because I have any right to at all. There's no money in any of this, so I'm sure Zak's cool with it.